1. Tik Tok sexual predators alert

Video sharing platform TikTok says it has a "zero tolerance" policy against the grooming behaviours of child predators but when an account, which identified itself as belonging to a 14-year-old girl, reported a male adult for sending sexual messages, TikTok didn’t ban it. It only took action after the BBC current affairs documentary programme Panorama, sought an explanation.

TikTok doesn’t allow an account to receive or send direct messages if the user registers themselves as being under 16 but many of its youngest members lie about their date of birth. A Panorama 23-year-old female journalist opened an account posing as a young girl and picked up followers including what appeared to be older men. One sent a series of messages in the early hours of the morning asking if the user wanted to see his penis, describing it in explicit terms. In both these cases, the men continued to send the “child” private messages even after she had told them she was 14.

Child safety experts in the UK say parents need to be aware of the risks involved with letting their children use TikTok.

2. A Trump landslide?

Records are being broken in California with 11.2 million ballots (or 51%) returned as of 8am Monday morning, the Los Angeles Times reports. There are 22 million registered voters in the state this year and this is a Democrat stronghold. “It’s undeniable, absolutely factual, 100% we’re going to set a record in the total number of votes cast in an election in California,” said Paul Mitchell, vice president for Political Data. He expected two major demographics from both parties to turn out for in-person voting Tuesday in California: young people and Latinos on one side, and Republicans on the other. Based on polling and survey research, Mitchell said Latinos tend to trust in-person voting more, and he expects a surge of first-time voters doing same-day registration on election day. On the flipside, he said, polling showed many Republicans prefer to vote in person. It’s the title of a novel about Australia but They’re a Weird Mob really should be about Americans!

3. The race that stops a nation

“It’s the race that stops a nation!” We’ve all heard this before around the first Tuesday in November but few people know the line was coined by the great US author and commentator Mark Twain, who came to Australia in 1895 as a part of a worldwide tour of 150 lectures. Twain is famous for many things, including writing such books as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).

The Cup has been a public holiday for Melbourne city since 1877 and this ensures great attendance crowds. Twain said of his visit to the Melbourne Cup in 1895: “Nowhere in the world have I encountered a festival of people that has such a magnificent appeal to the whole nation. The Cup astonishes me’. He went onto say that “the Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It overshadows all other holidays and specialized days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies. Overshadows them? I might say it blots them out.”

4. Lockdown London

Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he had to impose a second lockdown in England, saying there was “no alternative” but to take further action. England, not the UK, goes into a one-month lockdown lasting from November 5 until December 2. Pubs, bars and restaurants must close except for takeout and delivery. Some industries where working from home isn’t possible — like construction and manufacturing — will be allowed to continue operating. People have been ordered to stay at home unless it’s for essential purposes, including education, medical reasons, or to shop for groceries. Interestingly, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland enforce their own COVID-19 rules. So when it comes to the Coronavirus, the UK is not united.

5. Wall Street's jumps higher

The major indexes have erased some of the losses from last week, with the Dow Jones ending the first trading day of this week 423.45 points or 1.60% higher to 26,925.05, the S&P 500 moving 40.28 points or 1.23% higher to 3,310.25 and the Nasdaq gaining 46.02 points or 0.42% to 10,957.61.